My sister is here this weekend and took Joey and her best friend Baylee on an Auntie-Niece date. They went to out to lunch at a local pizza place then Cherri took the girls to the driving range and they hit 2 buckets of balls. Last summer Cherri had gotten Joey a set of junior golf clubs but because of Joey's lightning and thunder anxiety, they weren't able to use them when we were visiting. After golf, they went to see Atlantis. Cherri said the movie was very convoluted and hard to follow. She dozed off some during the movie but the girls watched it with rapt attention. Neither could describe it to me with any sense of coherence afterward, though.

When they were going to the driving range, I really wanted to go with them and hit balls and I knew I would have been welcome, but I also knew that if I were there, Cherri and I would have been talking and joking the whole time and then the whole Auntie-Niece dynamic would have been disrupted. They interact differently when I'm there being the sister and mom. And I wanted Joey to feel special today on her day out with Auntie Cherri. I'll go to the driving range with Joey another time. That would be a good family activity. Golf is a good activity for Joey because it's something she seems to have a natural affinity for. She's not very coordinated but she can do the golf swing well. I'm going to look for some kid golf clinics this summer.

Ed and I took advantage of Joey's absence this afternoon and went out to lunch at a local Mexican restaurant we love. It was so nice to enjoy a meal with him and be able to chat. Eating out (at some place other than fast food) is one of our favorite activities but sometimes we forget to make time for it.

We had our International Dinner Group last night. It was a trip to Greece. We had avgolemono (lemon-rice soup), spanikopita (spinach and feta stuffed phyllo sheets--I made them), dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves), Greek salad, tsatsiki (yogurt, garlic and cucumber sauce) with pitas, saganaki (bourbon-flamed kasseri cheese) with kalamata olive bread, lemon chicken and potatoes and a citrus-walnut cake. It was all very delicious. I *love* lemon so I was pretty happy. Ed once said that my sisters and I were responsible for keeping the lemon trade solvent because we don't like just a squeeze of lemon--we like the whole damn thing. (We're like that with vinegar, too.)

Ed and I are hosting the next one. It will be in August and it will be an outdoor one. We're planning to do Southern US food. Fried catfish and hush puppies, greens, perhaps some grits, maybe some fried chicken, and who knows what else. Since we're headed to the deep south in a month, we're going to take notes and bring some things back to sample.

Later...

--L